Subjectivity is Fucked

Let us begin with subjectivity, our inner self, the center of perception and thought. Where, precisely, does this subjectivity find its limits? Is it confined to the body? To the mind? Are my appendages mere extensions of my subjectivity, distanced only by a single degree? My mind exercises command over my hands and feet, my arms and legs. It is through these appendages that my mind exerts its agency. Now, place a wrench in my hand: the wrench becomes a second-degree extension, a tool through which my mind operates. And when I speak, language itself becomes the medium, a first-degree removal from subjectivity. The ears of the listener become a second degree, and through this layered process, I exert influence over others.

Yet words, even when internalized as thoughts, retain a separation from my core being. Words carry a history, a set of assumptions and cultural baggage. If we strip these assumptions away, what remains is the subject in its raw form. Being. Yet being, too, is mediated by sensation. And like words, sensations are not pure; they are attuned to the world by the parameters of biology. We perceive only a sliver of the electromagnetic spectrum, we hear within certain frequencies, our sensations are hardwired, programmed.

Psychosis disrupts this programming. They offer not simply a "rewiring" of the brain but an alternative tuning to reality, allowing subjectivity to slip its usual constraints. For me, this fluidity affirms that subjectivity is not fixed but mutable, a dynamic process.

If we strip away language and sensation, what remains? A bare existence, an inner being composed of feelings, impulses, drives. There is a biology that is inescapable, distinctly human. We can erase language; we can numb sensation; but we cannot fully erase biology. Not yet. Biology manifests as will or desire, as metabolic processes and respiration.

What of time and space? These seem inherent to subjective experience. I perceive them not as external objects but as frameworks, boundaries that shape perception itself. They are not malleable in the same way as language or sensation. Yes, our perception of time and space can shift, but their foundational presence remains, innate, like being. They are inescapable frameworks, and yet, perhaps we can imagine a radical escape, one that involves a dissolution of the self, a loss of consciousness.

My being seems only superficially related to time and space; it exists within them but is not defined by them. I posit an “outsideness” to my subjectivity, a vantage point from which reality can be conceptualized, or perhaps from which reality simply is. Noumena. Yet if time and space are frameworks akin to noumena, how can I be certain they are not noumenal themselves? Could time and space be the ultimate noumena, the very canvas on which all else is painted?

This, then, is the framework I have constructed. But here lies my first assumption: that things are as I have defined them. My attraction to altered states of consciousness, through drugs, psychosis, or other means, stems from their potential to expand subjectivity. They render reality in unconventional, abnormal ways. We assume normalcy to be inherent and truthful, but these altered states reveal an alternative mode of existence, inherently tied to the structure of subjectivity itself.

What if we could redesign subjectivity? Imagine abstract concepts not merely thought, but felt or seen. What if thoughts took on a visual form, like tangible objects? What if subjectivity could be duplicated, cloned, merging and diverging, stacking upon itself, or perhaps fractaling outward? Each iteration distinct, yet simultaneously expansive, much like the individual cells that collectively compose my body, or the way multiple minds coalesce into groupthink.

The techno singularity, then, is not simply a technological event; it is the expansion of what subjectivity could become. Already, through technology, we are more connected than ever. This points to the singularity not as a mere point of convergence, but as a process of contraction, bringing subjectivities closer together. In this sense, subjectivity is dissolving. As it does, noumena shrink. The external reality we once considered solid is collapsing into the singular, contracting frame of unified subjectivity.